


Number Twenty-Six

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, AU, F/M, Fluff, Rumbelle - Freeform, Woobie!Rum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-30 02:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20806823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Belle has a new crush. She met him on the bus to work. Of course she did. He was driving it.Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: meeting on a morning commute.





	Number Twenty-Six

“Tell me all about this new man of yours, then.”

Belle looked up from her rather lack-lustre salad to find Ruby flinging herself into the seat opposite and fixing her with a grin that on anyone else could probably be called maniacally terrifying. 

“Well…” Belle wondered if she could get out of the conversation by pretending to have an urgent meeting. Not that pen-pushers like her and Ruby ever had urgent meetings, but it was worth a try. It wasn’t that she had outright lied about having a new man in her life. She’d simply omitted certain details, and in doing so, she had inadvertently led Ruby to believe that the relationship was a lot further advanced than it actually was. Namely, that it was actually a relationship and not just two people exchanging pleasantries. 

“What’s his name, for a start?”

“Aiden.” At least that she definitely knew. “Aiden Gold.”

“Well, you’ve certainly kept Mr Gold nicely under wraps. Where did you meet him? Because I know you, you never go out anywhere, not for want of me trying.”

“On the bus to work.” This was also completely true. 

“Look at you, flirting on your commute! So, I take it that he works near here.”

“You could say that, yes.” Well, it wasn’t _not_ true.

“Perfect. You should be spending your lunch breaks with him, not stuck in the office kitchen with me.”

“Erm… Our hours don’t really line up like that.” This was pretty much true.

“That’s a shame.” Ruby leaned in a little closer and offered Belle her half-empty tube of Pringles. “So, how many times have you seen him now?”

“Five.” Again, no word of a lie. Belle was beginning to think that she might actually have a chance of making to the end of this conversation. 

“So, what’s he like? What do you talk about?”

Belle described Aiden’s physical attributes and tactfully avoided the second question. Sadly, Ruby was too quick for her and raised an eyebrow.

“You have actually spoken to this man, right, Belle?”

“Of course!”

“And what did you say?”

Belle sighed; the secret could be kept no longer.

“I thanked him for waiting at the bus stop whilst I was running and asked him for a return to the Lakeside Business Park.”

“Belle! You’re seriously telling me that you have a crush on the bus driver?”

“Bus drivers are perfectly acceptable people to have crushes on.”

“I’m not saying that they’re not, I just… You told me that you had his number!”

“The number twenty-six is a number!”

“It’s the number of your bus!” Ruby moaned and rested her head against the table. “I give up on attempting to assist you with your love life. In fact, I wash my hands of you entirely, and I hope that you and Aiden Gold, number twenty-six bus driver, are very happy together when you actually ask him out.”

Ruby did have a point. How did you go about asking a bus driver out? The entire extent of their conversation consisted of daily ten second interactions when she bought her ticket. If she’d been running for the bus (she really needed to start leaving the house earlier in order to make it to the bus stop in plenty of time), it took slightly longer because she needed to get her breath back. 

And after all, it wasn’t like she really knew anything about him apart from the fact he had a lovely smile, he drove a bus and he never waited until she was almost at the doors before driving off, like some bus drivers had done in the past. 

It probably wasn’t the best foundation on which to start dating the man.

As things turned out, circumstances actually set themselves up quite well without any intervention on Belle’s part. She’d had to stay late at the office correcting some mistakes that a colleague had made, and she was in a perfectly horrible mood as she hurried away from the business park towards the bus stop. It was the last of the regular buses and if she missed it, she’d be waiting around for two hours for the next one. It was already standing at the stop as she rounded the corner, and Belle broke into a run. Unfortunately, there were only a few people waiting at this time of an evening and the line was not long enough to keep the bus stationary until she reached it. 

“Wait!” she yelled, waving her arms around. “Please wait!”

It wasn’t as if the driver could hear her, and they probably couldn’t see her. Or, they could see her, and they were a sadist intent on making her walk home. The bus’s indicator flicked over and it began to pull away. Belle put on a final, useless burst of speed and then hurtled to a stop. 

“WELL, SCREW YOU THEN!” she screamed. 

The bus stopped, hazard lights flashing, and Belle wondered if she was having some kind of out of body experience. Still, she wasn’t going to spend any time standing around debating God’s will when providence was smiling on her, and she began to sprint again, flinging herself through the open doors and shoving her ticket at the driver.

She blinked as he clipped it and handed it back to her. It was Aiden, and immediately her foul mood melted away.

“Hello,” he said, flashing her a shy little smile as he closed the doors and pulled the bus away from the curb again. Belle rocked on her feet as the bus started to move and she grabbed hold of the driver’s cab to steady herself. “I don’t normally see you on this one.”

“Erm, no. Thanks for stopping.”

“My pleasure. Couldn’t leave you stranded, after all. Now, there’s a roundabout coming up, so you’ll want to take a seat.”

Still somewhat stunned, Belle sank into a seat and stared out of the window. Of all the bus drivers in all the world who could have been driving the late bus, it was Aiden. This was a sign, it had to be. It was telling her to go for it. Quite how she was going to go for it was another matter, but she had the length of the bus journey to figure that out, and to get her breath back. She didn’t have a plan, but she knew that she was not going to get off the bus without speaking to him and hopefully getting a number that wasn’t just the number of the bus. 

Once her heart had returned to a pace resembling normal, a thought had begun to form in Belle’s mind. She got off the bus only a couple of stops before the end of the route, and she was already late in coming home. It wasn’t as if the cats would mind an extra few minutes whilst she walked down another couple of streets; they would already be mad at her for not giving them their dinner at the normal time. If she just waited until the last stop, then she could take to Aiden without fear of holding him up too much. 

She stayed seated past her usual stop, and she glanced up towards the driver’s seat, catching Aiden’s eyes in the rear-view as he looked back at her. He’d held the bus in a morning for her enough times to know where she got on. She just smiled back at him. 

They reached the end of the line and Aiden leaned out of his cab, looking back at her. 

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get off now. My shift’s finished and I can’t leave the bus with people still on it.”

Belle stepped off the bus, hanging around by the stop as Aiden locked up. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said eventually, once they had been looking at each other for a few moments, because it was clear that she’d stayed until the end of the line with a purpose and she should probably make that known. “I wanted to say thank you properly, for stopping for me.”

“It’s nothing. I know that I’d be put out if I had to wait two hours for the next bus. And I recognised you in the mirror.”

“The number of times you’ve held the bus for me now, you’re becoming my personal saviour.”

“I can live with that.” Aiden smiled.

“I…” Belle paused. The age-old question of ‘how do you ask your bus driver out on a date?’ came back into her mind. She decided that the easiest thing to do would just be to ask outright. “If your shift’s over, do you maybe want to get a drink?”

Aiden shook his head. “I can’t, I have to get home to my son. But I don’t work Sundays. We could get coffee.”

“That sounds great.”

His face lit up, and within a couple of minutes numbers had been exchanged and details worked out. It was only when Aiden was about to move away that Belle realised they were being watched. The driver who was taking over from Aiden for the evening shift was standing by the bus, an amused expression on her face. Aiden groaned when he saw her, burying his face in his hands. 

“Are you getting on or have you just got off?” she asked Belle politely, before turning to Aiden. “I don’t know whether to despair of you for flirting with the passengers or congratulate you for actually speaking to someone beyond asking where they’re going and telling them their fare.”

Without moving his hands from his face, Aiden made the introductions.

“Ursula, Belle. Belle, Ursula.”

Ursula just patted Aiden’s arm before opening the bus’s doors again, and Belle wondered if she’d actually see him on Sunday after all or if Ursula’s appearance had shot that idea down before it got started. 

“So… Sunday?” she hedged. 

“Yes.” Aiden nodded and finally looked up at her. “I’m looking forward to it, especially because Ursula will be ten miles away driving a park and ride at the time.”

“Hey, I heard that!”

They said their goodbyes and began to walk in opposite directions. As she headed towards home, Belle sent a message to Ruby.

_I have his number._

_An actual number this time, or still just 26?_

_An actual number, and a date to go with it._

_Way to go, Belle! Can I make a bunch of jokes about riding the bus now?_

_Absolutely not._

_You’re no fun. _

Belle smiled to herself as she got into her apartment to be met with the frantic meowing of two hungry and indignant cats. The bus was probably the most mundane place she’d ever expected to find romance, but find it she had. 


End file.
